Rowley Burn (Northumberland)

Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, completed around 731, recounts a story of the Battle of Heavenfield, which Bede says took place 'in loco, qui lingua Anglorum Denisesburna, id est Riuus Denisi, uocatur' ('in a place which in the language of the English is called Denisesburna, that is the stream of Denisus' around 634. William Greenwell found evidence in a charter issued for the Archbishop of York by Thomas de Whittington in 1233 that Denisesburna was identical with Rowley Burn, and the identification has been accepted since. Despite Bede's interpretation of the Old English word Denisesburna as meaning 'Denisus's stream', more recent scholarship has judged that the first…